Stonehenge, Bath, Shakespeare's Home

The cottage at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Matthew and I bought paninis and he bought a cheese and onion pasty at Victoria station. Paul the hairy-eared Irish tour guide took the head count and yelled at us for having "malodorous" food and was stern about speaking loudly but he was pleased that we were attentive to his Stonehenge and Bath lectures and softened and befriended us by day's end.

Stonehenge's sky was low and the rolling green plain spread before the north wind. There was a sense of the sacred and the artistic and the epic and the journeying nature of primitive man in the 5,000 year old megaton stones. The audio guide had a quote from the last lines of classic literature master Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles describing the sullen stones. It is silly to go to world famous sites and pose in front of them so I decided to turn this idea on its head - literally (photos on Facebook to come).

The Georgian architecture of Bath surrounded us as we spotted the locals. Matthew sought out dogs and an old couple warned him that their grey Jack Russell bit but he thought it would not and we all had a laugh when the animal snapped at his too-close fingers.

Then the Bard's home and O my brothers it was like a Meccan pilgrimmage. The Tudor cottage was still intact after years of refurbishment and Matty asked a young blonde guide whether Shakespeare had written all his plays. She said we know that he didn't write all of the later stuff including Henry VIII and I interjected - but no one reads that play anyway - and she said but we know he wrote all of the major works, i.e. Hamlet, of which the soliloquies alone are enough to guarantee a man eternal fame. And she mentioned how he took these stories from sources and reinvented them and we said yes, interesting how art is all about borrowing and reinvention and this reminds me of a certain post postmodern blog.

A Post Postmodern Moment

 Mr. Quinn had grown up in small-town Pennsylvania. His father was a coal-miner and worked hard all day. After their shift he and the boys went to the local watering hole before heading home. Three times out of four, Davy's father came home to hear his weak wife complain about something Davy had done, while she nursed two other young children, Davy the oldest by five years. After a few shots of whiskey, Mr. Quinn Sr. hated to hear from his wife that Davy had been evil during the day. And as tired as the soot-faced man was, he took his belt to the boy and made him sleep in the toolshed. 
    Davy had done his Ph.D at Penn State in English after spending most of his youth reading classics and avoiding his father's wrath. He had never married, was a philanderer. He presently dated the school nurse, Ms. Pillary, a tall, thin woman clear blue eyes and thin red lips. He lived alone with a Staffordshire Terrier, and spent most weekends upstate, sometimes with Ms. Pillary. He fished on Sundays.
    You don't even know that happened with certainty, do you? That stuff about his father beating him and keeping him in a shed, that was all bullshit wasn't it?
    No, of course not.
    Well how do you know it happened?
    I remember the way he looked, older Gabriel. That glimmer in his eye when I turned in that villanelle and no one else did, and he said keep it, and I asked if we're going to get graded on it and he said no, but you didn't do it for nothing, and he nodded slowly, with his big Staffordshire head convincing you that your efforts weren’t for naught. His gimlet eyes were enough to tell me some of his own pain. So whether or not his father was a coal miner or a printer doesn't matter, but what does is  how he influenced us. Without him you would probably wouldn't be writing this right now.
    Yeah, you're probably right about that.
    I know I am. Why do you always argue with me? You think that your youth was simply idealistic prattle, but it was the purest you've ever been, the most passionate about writing. All of the stuff you're writing now is pablum compared to what you did when you were eighteen, nineteen.
    But I was so young, inexperienced.
    No one said you were Hemingway. But if you try to channel me a little more often, older self, you might actually find some readers. They will listen to you, through me. Why? Because I am your inner child. I am raw. I am not cultivated by society's expectations. Listen to me! Don't ignore me because you've grown wiser. I was wise, but inexperienced. Together we can be great. You need to recognize me.
    Maybe you're right. I have been taking a lot of criticism about the lack of passion in this book. We were so ubermenschian when we were younger.
    I know. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Once you hit twenty-five you became jaded and realistic.
    You're right.
    Okay, you're boring them. Get back to our story.  

Help: A Post Postmodern Dilemma

Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne"

Dear Gorgeous,

So far this has been my blog. I'm totally willing to publish anything you guys think is relevant. I mean, it is an internet warehouse after all, it's supposed to store a lot of different stuff.

Anyway I've been thinking about my book lately, the ol' Hot Love On The Wing. I've been trying to delve deep into the character of my female protagonist, Daphne. I've two main ways of approaching it:

1. Show Don't Tell: The way most good writing works. I show a scene where Daphne gets frustrated by the way menfolk don't take her seriously, even though she has good things to say, and you guys get an idea of what kind of woman she is.

2. Post Postmodernist: I point out to you that I can't truly know what Daphne is thinking, but based on the fact that I, the narrator and protagonist, have lived with and known Daphne for years, I have a good idea of what she might be thinking. While this can give you insight into the protagonist's psychology and his relationship with Daphne, it is a potential trap: I'm telling without showing.

Can you see my dilemma? If there are any ideas on how to solve this, or if any writers wanting to step up and suggest what I ought to do, please feel free.

All my love,
Daniel Adler

David Copperfield is So Post Postmodern

Young Charles Dickens

 So I'm reading David Copperfield, which makes Great Expectations look like chicken feet. Dickens employs certain techniques that are very far ahead of his time, such as switching from the past tense to the present for a rush of immediacy. Take this sentence from chapter XVIII, "A Retrospect:"

"I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides, I shall be one and twenty in no time almost."

Here, the narrator, a much older man writing his bildungsroman, remembers his youth with great perspicacity. Sorry. But the way he moves to the thought process of his younger self is worthy of emulation and the hinted second person address is similar to what I'm working with.

J.D. Salinger knew it too. He mentions ol' Davy in the first sentence of what is obviously the best bildungsroman of the 20th century:  

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."


Dickens is a boss. 'Nuff said.

Sonnet for the Fields

The sonnet is the truest form of poetry known to man, and it's not going anywhere in post postmodernism.

In the cold winter of our heart’s content

It was easy to forget rosy spring.

Green eyed jealousy’s missiles were not sent

Before a storm came under love’s warm wing.

To  think the vinous juice of love runs dry

Because clouds cluster over fertile plains

Is to forget casks in winter’s supply,

And deny fallow fields will sprout again.

Autumn’s glow brings fears of colder winters:

And old men study grey skies on porches,

Speculating over the harvest’s yield;

Study, focus, fail to see small splinters

And as you gallop your hobbyhorses

Horizonal sun breaks onto the field.

I’m not the first man to be a damn fool

Ruminating on the future is cruel.

-Daniel Adler

Twain, Tolstoy and Austen, Oh My!

The literature world is abuzz with news. Mark Twain’s autobiography is finally going to be released after 100 years of waiting. I’ve been reading a lot of his pithy one-liners: “Adverbs are the enemy of the verb;” “Travel is fatal to prejudice” and admiring them for their brevity and truth. Hemingway greatly admired the man, and said that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. “ Twain's style was without verbosity and decoration, which is why I’m unsettled by the half million words in the soon to be three volumes of the manuscript published by the University of California. I was so excited to read it, but now, knowing that it’s longer than War and Peace, I’m neutral.

Speaking of War and Peace, I’ve reached the 1,000 page mark! And Tolstoy also died exactly 100 years ago today. Rest his soul.

And in other literary news, Jane Austen, who was supposed to have turned out finished masterpieces, was actually found to have had an editor. Gasp! It doesn’t diminish her status as a great writer, though; it seems most of the edits were spelling, and punctuation. The editor also said you can use some more speech tags (he said, she said, which Austen famously omitted, noting that she didn’t write for “dull elves”). How post postmodern of her.

The Meaning of September: Post Postmodernism and Change

September is the most popular birthday month. Surprised? You shoudn’t be. During those cold winter holidays, everyone couples up and huddles close.

Anyway, with all these babies being born, school starting again, and the beginning of the end of the year, you may feel that vague fear that comes before impending change, especially if you’re having a baby.

That’s the beginning of a post I wrote for Net Kids Wear. The best thing about my job is the free association and philosophizing. Like most writers, I incorporate my own sentiments into a translated version of what I’m paid for. Just before Little Matthew arrived, I often felt that vague fear – like I’m overlooking a precipitous drop. Not that the vertiginous view is  negative, it just happens that when you try to look into the future, you begin to get a little woozy. Better to just let it wash over you.  

So I’ll continue to let you know how this change affects the life of Daniel Adler, in a very post postmodern (bloggy) way. In the meanwhile, read some high literature, view some avant garde art, and watch the seasons change.